Short Summary

The near-advent of spring, with snow still on the ground, means that sugar-rich sap is rising in a certain vartiey of maple tree-the sugar maple--and can now be tapped to be made into syrup, or fudge, or light candy.

Description

The near-advent of spring, with snow still on the ground, means that sugar-rich sap is rising in a certain vartiey of maple tree-the sugar maple--and can now be tapped to be made into syrup, or fudge, or light candy. The syrup is good when poured over hot pancakes with a generous dab of butter beneath.

The maple three is first tapped and a bung pushed into the hope so that the sap can drip into a pail. The watery sap is then billed to reduce the water. If most of the water is boiled off, a thick maple fudge remains. If water is left in, syrup is produced.

Maple sugar production is less than it was 100 years ago, but it is still a sizeable industry in New England and in some mid-West states like Ohio.

To the people in the northeastern Great Lakes region...spring doesn't come with crocuses or ground hogs.. spring is on the way the sap rises in the maples.

Verbatim: The changing weather in Ohio is the reason we can make maple syrup....freezing one day and warm as spring the next...and right when it get warm the sap is the best...smooth and lightin-tasting.

That's the time to tap the trees... if the weather stays warm too long, the trees begin to bud, and the sap gets thick and heavy. The light sap is the beginning for the best syrup....it's boiled and boiled to get most of the water boiled out of it.

If the boilding syrup is whipped while it's not, it will crystallize to the dark chunks of maple sugar ... the sugar pioneers used for sweetening...

If the syrup is cooled and then whipped it turns into as often creamy candy called maple sugar fudge. The entire great lakes region, including Canada and the United States, used to produce more than six million gallons of the stuff..but that was ne hundreds years ago. Now maple syrup production in down to one sixth of that, and it's parcelled out in smaller portions... but that doesn't diminish the first taste of it, Alice Neff NBC NEWS in Gauge County Ohio